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OLDaily - Text Edition by Stephen Downes Apr 04, 2016
Online Education: A Catalyst for Higher Education Reforms
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This is an interesting forward-looking document from MIT.
While the authors take pains to be clear that this is not a
blueprint for the future of education, it does draw out
some interesting lines of thoughts, including
recommendations for research collaboration, showing the
relevance of online learning to higher ed, creating the
'learning engineer', and fostering change to implement
reforms. The meat of the document, though, is found through
pages 6-10 under the heading 'key fronts in education
research'. I am by no means convinced of all of these, but
they're worth noting. For example, would I including the
findings of cognitive psychology in the mix? Well, they
can't be ignored, but there are clear grounds for
scepticism, so I am not sure I would take them as a given.
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Despite what you've been told, you aren't 'left-brained' or
'right-brained'
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This is what happens when everyone gets to have a theory
and 'science' in your discipline consists essentially of
categories and taxonomies. "Despite Anderson's work and
other studies
http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/4/475.abstract?sid=b99d03b9-38cc-4858-98e3-49f54244898d"
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that continue to disprove the idea that personality type is
related to one or the other side of the brain being
stronger, my guess is that the left-brained/right-brained
vernacular isn't going away anytime soon. Human society is
built around categories, classifications and
generalizations, and there's something seductively simple
about labeling yourself and others as either a logical
left-brainer or a free-spirited right brainer." Nice
picture of a brain though.
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More Recognition/Identification Service APIs – Microsoft
Cognitive Services
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Many of the people I work with don't seem to see this
coming, but from where I sit we're on the verge of
commoditized artificial intelligence. AIAAS - Artificial
Intelligence as a Service - is here now, as this item
indicated. Tony Hirst recent "posted A Quick Round-Up
of Some *-Recognition Service APIs
http://blog.ouseful.info/2016/02/08/recognise-this-a-quick-tour-of-some-recognition-service-apis/ that
described several off-the-shelf cloud hosted services from
Google and IBM for processing text, audio and images." And
now we have "Microsoft Cognitive Services
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(formally Project Oxford, in part) brings Microsoft’s
tools to the party with a range of free tier and
paid/metered services
https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/pricing."
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The rhizome: A problematic metaphor for teaching and
learning in a MOOC
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I've never been a fan of the rhizome metaphor for learning,
but not for the same reasons given by Mackness, Bell and
Funes. They write, "We recognise that the rhizome can
successfully challenge traditional authoritarian,
hierarchical approaches to teaching and learning, freeing
learners to follow their own learning paths and determine
their own learning objectives," which is true, but as
criticism they argue "smooth space, the space of the
rhizome, is a difficult space for learners’ becoming,
and as Gale (2010) noted, it increases the vulnerability of
learners." ("Smooth space is open space, whilst striated
space is bordered.") This is just the old argument that
'constraint increases freedom', which for various reasons I
don't accept. To me, the rhizome metaphor fails because it
does not sufficiently capture diversity and complexity. But
that's a different topic.
How does the originator of the Rhizomatic MOOC, Dave
Cormier, respond
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"One point about vulnerability stuck out for me, and
resonated as something that needs thinking through in all
learning contexts. 'I think we do need to notice that a new
sort of resilience needs to be nurtured.'" I would that
that while it's true that hothouse flowers face challenges
in an open environment, it does not follow that closed
environments are better. Rather, we would encourage flowers
to grow without special protection - a certain kind of
resilience. Or as Cormier says, "we want to think of
resilience as a process rather than some innate quality
that people have."
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An Africa first! Liberia outsources entire education
system to a private American firm. Why all should pay
attention
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The push to privatize education continues apace, and like
many such initiatives, the focus is first on populations
unable to resist. In this case, the people of Liberia.
Kishore Singh
Link "Such
arrangements are a blatant violation of Liberia’s
international obligations under the right to education, and
have no justification under Liberia’s constitution."
Audrey Watters notes
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"The company in question is Bridge International Academies,
which has received funding
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from the Gates Foundation, Learn Capital, and Mark
Zuckerberg’s investment company the Chan Zuckerberg
Initiative (among others)... Simply saying 'Critics emerge
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in response? Wow."
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First steps in integrating LATs OER into Moodle open book
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This post is a little bit 'inside baseball' but it explores
the sort of question that's becoming more significant to us
as we accelerate development of our personal learning
environment, so it's interesting to me. Something typical:
"Ahh, broken link. The IMS version links back to
Blackboard. The equivalent web version has the open
link." Bleah. Our implementation of OpenEdX in LPSS.me had
the same sort of issue.
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Copyright 2008 Stephen Downes
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